


The Shattered Court

by rowaelinsmut



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, Multi, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 20:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13644162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowaelinsmut/pseuds/rowaelinsmut
Summary: Aelin





	1. Slave of Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aelin

In the dark, there was nothing but pain and regret. The faces of those she loved and cherished haunted her thoughts, a reminder of what she lost. She had known for a while what the cost would be to save them all but she did not plan for a different sort of price to be paid. 

Now, shut in the dark, a prisoner of darkness incarnate, she knew there were worse things. There was never saying goodbye. There was never laughing or touching her mate, her cousin and her best friend. There was never seeing her kingdom rise up and flourish. There was never knowing if her court, her family would make it out alive. 

Secrets had been her crutch these long months, the only way she could protect herself and her loved ones. Or so she thought. Instead, she would not be the one to save her people or the countless other lives at stake. Instead, she would be a slave once more. 

As the mask wore down on her face, making breathing difficult, she knew one thing with utter certainty: she would not make it out alive. She would not deserve that gift and prayed to the Gods who had sealed her fate one thousand years ago, that her mate would not die trying to redeem what she would become.

And for once, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was afraid.


	2. Reflections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lysandra

The face she would be forced to wear for the rest of her life was not her own. Each time she looked in the mirror, she felt an overwhelming sadness press on her heart. Even now, several years later, that face still shattered her. The Prince, or King she supposed had returned, desolate. Broken. There had been no one to save. 

Maeve had thoroughly broken the lost Queen and she would never return. He stopped looking at her, the face that reminded him of everything he had lost. But there were roles to be played. Lineages to secure. And though it pained her to force the two most important men in her life to see that face, she had to do her duty. 

She found it hard to resent what she would lose when things had gone so badly to get them to this place, the place where they were finally safe. Eventually, she would forget what her own skin felt like. Eventually, she would no longer yearn to be free from the obligations she bore. There was nothing to be done. So the shapeshifter forced a smile on that face, the face that broke the hearts of her court, and played her part. 

No one questioned the heirs that she and the Wolf of the North created in secret, passing them off as the king’s. Her kingdom fawned over the two children, over how much they took after their mother. And though she now knew a mothers’ love and had that to hang on to, she wished the king and the wolf would look at her and understand just how much she too missed her dearest friend and just how difficult and heavy a burden it was to see that face reflected back in the mirror every day.


	3. Last Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aedion

He should have taken the blood oath before it was too late. He should have realised long ago that she would have planned for everything to go to hell. That she would have ensured Terrasen had a future, that he himself would have a future. But not one with her. 

Now, he would never have that chance - to serve her, truly serve her as she deserved. After ten long years of bloodletting and whoring himself to Adarlan, the Wolf of the North never expected to see her again. And when he did, it was like every unanswered question had been resolved, every damning thing he had done, forgiven. 

He never should have taken their short time together for granted. Even now, several years after she had been lost, the loss of her felt like the loss of a limb. Like half his heart had been broken when she was taken. He couldn’t look at the shifter. Not when her eyes, their eyes, and her face looked back at him. It would be a while, he thought, before he could separate the shifter from his cousin. 

He knew what was expected of him but he wasn’t ready to forgive her for letting Aelin go. For not telling him what Aelin suspected. He would live out the days of his immortal life regretting that he hadn’t saved her, trusted her. And he would always resent the shifter for the part she played in allowing it to happen. 

Most of all, he would resent himself for the last words he spoke to her, the words that haunted him so many years later. He had lost his other half and there was no one to forgive him and no way to forget.


	4. Lost Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rowan

King. Mate. Husband. Buzzard. Carranam. He had been gifted with many names and titles when a Fire-Bringer sauntered into his life, altering him so irrevocably. In the early days, those were cherished titles, titles that brought him quiet joy and overwhelming and consuming love.

These days, they brought him nothing but pain and despair.

Those words taunted him because he no longer had a claim to any of them. He had lost her. There would be no salvation, no happy endings. He knew this and accepted it as he kneeled on the ground, these long years later, in front of the woman he tore the world apart to find and bring back.

But those eyes, the turquoise and gold eyes he cherished above all else were nothing more than blackness and that face… There was nothing of his soul-bonded left in it to bring back. Only icy coldness and an evil darkness.

The blood running down his face dripped and soaked into the ground as he looked once more into her face. He could have sworn she beckoned to him, begging for her freedom but it was always tricks with the Valg. That was how they drew you in - promises of relief.

And the King was exhausted of fighting. He let her consume him. If only for the hope that in the afterlife, she might be there to welcome him.

He forgot his name, he forgot those damned titles and as the final wave of blackness crashed in, devouring and destroying anything good and pure left in the shattered remnants of his heart, he sighed in relief and breathed his goodbye to his mate as his last words.


End file.
